


Wasted

by Jennifer-Oksana (JenniferOksana)



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Bitterness, Drunk Sex, Episode: s02e20 Lay Down Your Burdens (2), F/M, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-05
Packaged: 2018-05-24 22:45:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6169601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JenniferOksana/pseuds/Jennifer-Oksana
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were very good together, but that's all ruined now.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wasted

Nobody was quite sure how to respond to Baltar's order for immediate settlement. They were all happy, Lee supposed. Lee remembered saying he'd open a bar for his pilots if they could find a habitable rock, and New Caprica was about two degrees better than a habitable rock.

But.

Gods, the guilt was almost worse than the anger, the anger that'd been dogging Lee for months, ever since Kobol, and almost fatally since Cain's assassination came off after all.

Who the hell had he become? Who the hell had the president (and she was simply Laura now, or Ms. Roslin, or someone else, but not president anymore) turned into?

Dee wasn't happy, his father wasn't happy, and Lee's wondering what happened to everything. They'd had a map to earth, a plan, and then Laura Roslin didn't die like she'd promised. She hadn't died, and life got infinitely more complicated.

And now they were settling for New Caprica.

Lee found himself sitting in a lounge on Galactica, holding a bottle of booze and thinking about how he didn't understand where it all went to hell. Dee'd lost him hours ago, and his father was probably comforting Roslin or something, and Starbuck's got Anders.

None of them needed him anymore.

"Is that something alcoholic?" a woman asked, and if it were Ellen Tigh, Lee might actually frak her. But he looked up and jumped. "Do I look that bad?"

"I'm drinkin' that," he slurred.

"You drank that," Laura's voice answered. "Now I could use the rest, all right?"

Lee tried to focus, even though he'd bought the kind of booze that made that quite a challenge.

"Madam President?" he asked uncertainly. No. There was something wrong about that.

"Not anymore," the president -- former president -- replied. "Commander Adama."

"That's my father," Lee said, even though he knew it wasn't, not anymore. "Why do you need my alcohol to drink, Laura Roslin?"

"Because the whole thing's gone upside down," she said. "And I need to be drunk off my head, so that is why I need your booze."

Lee focused. And yes, it was really Laura Roslin, and she was really taking a long drink of the cheapest booze in the Colonies as she sat down across from him.

"Madam...I mean, ma'am," Lee said, saluting Laura Roslin, who shrugged diffidently. "Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right," she answered, walking right up to him and taking the bottle. The woman who was president then uncapped it, sniffed, grimaced, and then took a long swallow. "What is it? What, my dear Captain Apollo, has you so thunderstruck?"

"You just chugged some of Tyrol's rotgut," Lee said. "That might blind you."

"Good. Then I won't have to look at New Caprica," she answered, taking another long pull. "I'm sorry, is the self-destructive mood upsetting you? I promise I will be a calm and composed beacon of hope tomorrow."

It had been a while since they'd seen each other. Too long, he felt like saying, though he didn't know why.

"You're a sullen drunk," Roslin noted after draining about half of her share of the bottle. They'd migrated to their own private nook, a corner of the lounge that was shadowed and out of sight. "I wouldn't have guessed that. You chatter when you're nervous, so I'd have supposed you were a talker."

"I'm not drinking," Lee answered. "You took my alcohol away and so now I am sobering up while you get drunk and sulk about Baltar winning the election."

"I don't sulk, I plot," she said with a half-smile. "You know that."

Lee chuckled, even though it wasn't really that funny and he wasn't really that happy to hear it.

"So what are you plotting?" he asked. "Revolution? A military coup? An escape?"

"Curricula," Roslin said. "I'm done, Commander. I'm going back to teaching. Children, schoolbooks, a future. I can be a president some other lifetime."

"All right, then," Lee said. "If that's why you really want, go teach kids to read. You're good at it. Not as good as you are at leading, but I bet you're no slouch."

Former President Roslin started laughing, big hiccuping chuckles that edged toward hysteria but stayed just far enough away. Lee laughed along with Laura. No slouch. That was all they had to say about the end of all her hopes, all their dreams, and the dawn of a distinctly darker era for their people. No frakking slouch.

"I'm sorry," she said, draining the rest of the bottle and wincing from the burn of the cheap liquor. "I thought maybe it would be easier for you if I let you go."

"Was it?" he asked.

"No," she said. "We were good, weren't we?"

"Yes, we were," Lee said without hesitation. "We were amazing."

And she laughed again, turning to him with a question in her eyes. Lee was still pretty drunk, but they were rapidly reaching parity in terms of just how wasted they were. And so it was okay, almost, to feel like they were on even footing again. She was getting drunker, he was getting soberer, and they were so good together.

Lee leaned over and deftly took the bottle away from Laura, then. But she wasn't about to be upstaged -- her hand brushed against his just as their eyes met and dared him to back away.

"I should go," she said unconvincingly, her entire posture a come-on. "I'm sure there are people worrying about my whereabouts."

"Frak 'em," Lee said, breath harsh and hot in his own ears.

Laura paused, finger still on his wrist. "You're dating that girl," she said. "Billy's girlfriend, the little cute one. Dee."

"Do you really care about that?" he asked, thinking of his father, of his awkward, 'you should have told me about the woman' that Lee never thought was about Shevon.

"Oh, don't make this a referendum on me," she said, eyes flickering up at him. "I've been drinking and I don't really think sense when it comes to you, Captain Apollo."

"I'm not a captain anymore," Lee said, but gods, it got him going, that name. When he'd been her Captain Apollo, he'd known what he wanted from his life.

"I know," Laura said, getting to her feet with a marked sway. "And that's another reason why I should..."

It was easy. Reach out, pull her in, kiss her hard. Flinch slightly because Lee couldn't help but expect the slap to the mouth, the rebuke that it was inappropriate, something that would tell him he should stop.

Instead, she kissed back, pressing her hips and her lips against his in a way that did her begging for her. _Frak her_ , her body begged. Laura needed him again, and Lee was helpless against that need.

"I always wanted to do this," Lee said when they finally broke the kiss for air.

"Oh, did you?" Laura answered, resting her forehead on his shoulder. "That's almost sweet."

"Almost?" Lee asked.

She leaned up and brushed her mouth against his, hot and sour with alcohol and disappointment. "Where were you when I needed you, Captain Apollo?" she asked as Lee fumbled at her jacket.

"Taking the easy road," Lee answered, pressing his mouth to her throat. "And I'm here now."

"We're going to hell," Laura said softly, pulling his shirt over his head with surprising dexterity. "One we made together."

They had been so good together, and Lee thought he understood her bitterness. What had stopped them from continuing their friendship? What had come between them so that they spoke like people who never spoke? Only fear. He was too young, she was going to die, they had a fleet to unify under the pleasant fiction of Mom and Dad, Adama and Roslin, and by the time the miracle had come, she'd put herself out of his orbit.

Fear. He should have been at her side when Baltar had betrayed her, advising her the way he'd used to. She should have let him see her. Only fear, making the gulf of silence too wide and too normal.

"I wanted you," Lee said again. "I wanted this."

"Oh, so did I," Laura confessed as his fingers undid the waistband of her trousers and found their way underneath. "We shouldn't do this here."

"Where else?" Lee asked. "It's a dark corner. Everyone else is celebrating. We..." and he ran his palm over one of her breasts, "Are being forgotten as we speak."

She whimpered, and he couldn't tell if it were desire or despair, but from the way she bit into his shoulder, it didn't really matter.

"That's our choice," Laura murmured as he sat her on the table.

"We're the servants of the people," Lee answered, as his own pants are unbuckled and slid to his ankles. "Vox populi, vox dei."

"No," Laura said as he pushed into her. "Not today."

And they were good together.

Even with the fumbling that came from cheap booze and bitter regret, even though Lee had to slam his mouth over Laura's because nobody could hear them, even though he finished first and spent another twenty minutes on his knees, bringing her to the same point while she bit down on her own hand to muffle the noise.

Even though when he sat down next to her at their little forgotten table, the look in her eye was resolute.

Never again.

"Are you really going back to teaching?" Lee asked, his hand in hers.

"Are you really going to command Pegasus?" Laura countered sadly.

"We could run away again," Lee said. "Take the Beast and go find Earth. Frak, it doesn't even have to be Pegasus. I'm sure we could find a few people who don't want to live on New Caprica under Baltar."

"Like your father and Dee," Laura answered, putting her head on his shoulder again. "We failed, Lee. We can't make it worse than it's already going to be."

"We would have been happy," Lee said, wishing the words unsaid even as they sat there between them. "I would have made you happy."

Laura turned to him then, running her hand over his face. "Captain Apollo," she said in a voice full of love. "Someday, when you tell your children this story, you will understand just how young you were."

He didn't care about being young at the moment. "I would have," Lee repeated, fixing his eyes against hers.

"You would have," Laura agreed gracefully. "But since when has it ever been a case of making one woman happy?"

Lee has always been sure he would have had an answer for Laura. One that would have solved the problem of Dee, his father, the election, the uncertain future.

But then the whole room shuddered a little, and the both of them hurried out to see the light as Cloud Nine went up from a nuke, ending any hope Lee ever had of winning Laura for good.

"Oh, gods," Laura said, looking at the cloud of wreckage. "I...I have to go."

She left, probably to find his father and comfort survivors and do what she could now that he was out of power.

He didn't follow. Because he didn't have anything to say except that he was sorry, and that all he could offer her was his attempt to make her happy.

And of what use was happiness to someone trying to save the world?


End file.
